Brewing ENGAGEMENT

Nespresso has moved beyond being a ‘machine company’ and is eager to share its coffee story with customers, says Thailand chief Priti Halai.

Maybe your out-ofhome coffee is a premium one and your in-home coffee is filtered or instant. This is the opportunity we have. You know you can have good coffee but you don’t know you can have it at home

I think my finance background helps me keep my focus because here in the Thai market there is so much opportunity. We can do so many things, but it has to be rational, pragmatic and focused

Born and brought up in Kenya, Priti Halai is emphatic when she says, “I’ve never thought of myself as an Indian. Exactly the way I consider myself is Kenyan. “But if you give me Indian music, Indian food, then I’ll sing and I dance,” the business executive officer of Nespresso Thailand adds with enthusiasm.

“When I land (there) and I see the giraffes, the red soil and the greenery that I love, it’s my home,” Ms Halai recalls of the last time she we went back to Kenya two years ago with her husband and mother-in-law.

It was her husband’s first time in the East African country. “We wanted to treat his mother. He lost his father in 2015. So, we took her to Kenya with us and on a safari after a short flight from Nairobi. … She loved that. We saw a lion while landing and I said, ‘Welcome to Kenya,’” she tells Asia Focus, smiling at the memory.

As her only brother still lives in Kenya with his children, Ms Halai says she remains “really passionate” about the country and still has a Kenyan passport. “My friends are all Kenyans. I follow the politics of Kenya. I’m interested in the government (there) and I get very upset when something wrong happens in politics there.”

Her parents moved to Kenya from India to look for business opportunities. East Africa, she says, has been important to Indians ever since they were brought there to help build the East African railway at the end of the 19th century. “That’s how the community started. I am a first-generation Kenyan.”

Ms Halai lived in Kenya until she was 19, when her parents and their four daughters moved to the UK, while her brother stayed behind. By the time she graduated with a BA in accountancy in the UK, her parents had moved back to India, while her three sisters still reside in the UK.

“My dad was so daring, so we were brought up to be daring,” the 46-year-old executive recalls.

“We are quite a mixed match of girls. I’m a complete extrovert. If you put me on a stage, I will start singing and dancing. I have two sisters who are completely introverted.

“My mother is little bit more subdued. She wouldn’t take the steps that I have taken, the risks I have taken. And I think I’ve taken risks, I’m much more open to other cultures.”

After graduating in the UK, Ms Halai held a handful of jobs before joining Nespresso there as chief financial officer, a post she held until 2011.

“I thought I would remain the CFO until I retired, until they transferred me to Switzerland, the headquarters. They asked me to keep finance but to look after zones and Thailand was actually one of my markets. I developed the business case for Thailand before we opened it, so it’s close to my heart,” she says.

Ms Halai moved to Thailand in February 2015, embarking on her first commercial role outside of finance.

“I’d started doing some projects and (I thought) I could do so much more if I’m heading a market. I talked to my manager and he said, ‘Yes, sure you can develop,’ and now here I am.”

“I was very worried when I said yes. … I was thinking, I hope they don’t send me to Timbuktu,” she joked. “Suddenly, they told me it’s going to be Thailand and I said yes, I’ll take it.”

‘IN-HOME PREMIUM’

Nespresso opened its first Thailand boutique at Siam Paragon in Bangkok. “The first one was more about giving the brand identity,” says Ms Halai. “Since then, the approach has been to broaden the channel to our customers.

“We want the customers to be reachable in any format that they like. So, we have spent a lot of our time making sure that our delivery capability is strong and the customer service is seamless.

Three more boutiques have been added in Greater Bangkok, with the latest one, at Mega Bangna, opened in January. She describes the boutiques as “more of an engagement centre. It’s an atmosphere where we can really talk with people about their coffee”.

Consumers who have been increasingly exposed to quality coffee in shops and cafes are now keen to replicate the experience at home.

“The market for instant coffee is really saturated here and our biggest job is to educate customers about coffee, in home and out of home,” Ms Halai notes.

“Maybe your out-of-home coffee is a premium one and your in-home coffee is, you know, filtered or instant. This is the opportunity we have. You know you can have good coffee but you don’t know you can have it at home.”

With a Nespresso machine, Thai consumers can enjoy premium coffee at home for a modest 20-26 baht a cup depending on the blend, she says. “There is a perception that Nespresso looks very expensive. That’s why it’s so important for us to educate them more about types of coffee, about how to make barista-style coffee, instead of jumping into the price. We are not expensive. We are an affordable option.”

The Nespresso story started with a simple but revolutionary idea: enable everyone to create a cup of coffee just like a skilled barista with an easy one-button press. Nestle pioneered a system for making espresso-based drinks using sealed coffee capsules back in 1975, but it took a decade to refine it to the point where Nespresso could be spun off as a stand-alone business.

Today the company is a global brand with a presence in 84 countries, with more than 800 boutiques and retail formats. Globally, it employs 14,250 people and works with more than 110,000 farmers.

Ms Halai observes that the general perception of Nespresso for a long time was that it was a “machine brand”. This was that case when she arrived in Thailand in 2015.

“It has taken us very long time to turn us into a coffee brand, or actually into a coffee experience brand,” she says.

“The idea is to extract the coffee with the right pressure and the right temperature so that when it comes into your cup, you get a full-round quality, not burned, not over-extracted or under-extracted, so it’s a full-round cup of coffee.

“It depends on the coffee: how you pack it, how you seal it, how you make sure the right pressure is there. The Nespresso idea was to do that for you. You just press the button.”

The company also works closely with farmers to select the right coffee beans and with roasters to create the right grinds for packing in capsules, she adds.

“We really assist the farmer because we know it’s a win-win approach. He has the coffee and the land and we need the quality. … When you take your sip, you will not know how much work has gone into making sure it’s so fresh. I find this very exciting.”

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

When Ms Halai first joined Nespresso in 2001, it was still a relatively small business, but being CFO kept her very busy as the company began to grow. “I was doing cashflow, balance sheet, money and treasury. The first five years, I didn’t talk to any customers,” she recalls. “I got so busy because it was a new system for Nestle. There were so many expectations for reporting numbers.

“The business was booming, growing 50-60%. In my CFO role, I would have to say, where is the right place to spend the money? … When I started to look at where to spend the money, I started to look into customer engagement, customer consumption, and moved away from just the numbers. That was when I started to fall in love with the story.”

Asked how she felt about the opportunity to take on her first commercial job, she says simply: “I wanted to do it so badly. I still love finance but I think finance is more about governance, being a gatekeeper.

“I think my finance background helps me keep my focus because here in the Thai market there is so much opportunity. We can do so many things, but it has to be rational, pragmatic and focused. So, it helps me bring productivity.”

Her career development is an example of how diversity and inclusion are gaining ground at Nespresso and Nestle as a whole. “It did go through the normal era of women not being in managerial or upper positions,” she acknowledges.

“I think a lot of it was because women need to have a job and to have a home,” she says. “That’s understood because it’s a societal thing. But when it comes to diversity, I think the company was very open because it is an international company.

“I think the idea was always that managers are equal. You have to remove the bias. There is a lot of unconscious bias. Sometimes there is a manager, not only at Nespresso, but generally, who looks at women and says, ‘Oh, you’re too busy at home to give 100% to the company.’ And the woman would say, ‘I would like to build a home and do your job, so you have to be flexible with me, otherwise I cannot be here.’

“I have never felt that I experienced bias because I’m a woman at Nestle,” she adds. “But I do understand that there are a lot fewer women than men in managerial positions in Nestle. And I know that they are definitely management material. It’s a priority for Nestle.

“I think that if they are ready to come forward, Nespresso will be ready to promote them. They gave me a commercial job in

Thailand, and the first person to lead Nespresso in Thailand was also a woman, a Chinese Singaporean. I personally feel that there are a lot of women in leadership positions.”

The company also wants to make sure that women in the farming community are empowered, because some cultures have different ideas about what women can or can’t do on a farm, she says.

“I think that for women generally it’s harder for them (than men) in society. At Nestle, I feel that they are a bit better understood than anywhere else.”

In her view, women are more empathetic and authentic. “I think men sometimes can show sympathy but it doesn’t help, while we show empathy. That’s quite different. I think it comes from our nurturing nature,” she says.

Women in leadership also have more of a focus on sustainable growth, she believes. “It’s not just about what are the sales today. My male friends or family members that are male, they talk about the sales today and women talk about building a strong organisation and sustainable sales. That’s a big difference.”

COVID DISRUPTION

Like executives everywhere, Ms Halai has had to deal with the disruptions brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. But Nespresso has still opened two new shops this year, and the very nature of its product is working in its favour. “Because people were at home and we serve coffee at home, consumption is growing.”

And while Nespresso is being cautious like any other business because current conditions are unprecedented, the Thailand operation is getting strong support from headquarters because it “understood our business case”, says Ms Halai.

“Many countries didn’t get the money we got,” she says, laughing.

In the short term, Nespresso is taking a very pragmatic approach. “We have refocused on safety first because we have factories, customer-facing teams. We just want to make sure that whatever we do, it would be safe. And we want to make sure that we keep delivering the coffee.

“When we closed the boutiques (during Thailand’s first lockdown in March 2020), we had to make sure the stocks were safe, and we had to double our capacity to deliver parcels … but we managed by working as a team.

“Everybody helped to pick up customers’ calls as we wanted to keep in contact with the customers. We wanted to make sure they understood. They understand why we are taking precautions.”

Safety is what concerns Ms Halai the most on a personal level. “My parents are in that age bracket and they are so far away,” she says. “If something happens and we cannot visit them and we cannot support them, for me that would be a disaster.

“Mum is in her late 60s and dad is 70 plus. They are retired. My dad always wants to be independent. He warns us: ‘Even if one of us is left alone, don’t call us to come and live with you guys. I will live here. I can look after myself’.”

Once Covid is gone, Ms Halai says her first visit will be to her parents in India. “I have two urgent things to do. In Kenya, my best friend had a medical emergency and had to have an amputation, losing her leg below the knee,” she says. “She’s been my friend since school and I have been through life with her. She is suffering. I really have to go and see her. I really want to be with her soon.”

And while Ms Halai has travelled extensively in Africa, her favourite destination is Nepal.

“Besides, Kenya, I’ve visited Morocco, Egypt, Congo, Gambia and Senegal in the West, Zimbabwe, as well as Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda in East Africa,” she says.

But her favourite holiday to date was a trip to Nepal with girlfriends. “The first time I paid for a holiday in a different destination out of the blue with my friends was a trip to Nepal. We were four girls and we went trekking.

“I was 23 or 24. I’d just started working for my first year, and I said let’s go somewhere. My bank balance is looking good now,” she says, laughing. “It was just magical because we’d known each other for quite a while and we were single as well.”

Today, looking around from her new base in Thailand, Ms Halai wants to explore more of the Asian region. “I haven’t been to Vietnam, for example. Indonesia one time but on a business trip so I cannot say I know Indonesia at all,” she says. “A lot of Asia I want to explore because I’m here.”